1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to camouflage garments and a method for making such garments, and in particular to a camouflage system combining multiple products to cover the body so as to form a continuous, or correlated, camouflage from product-to-product, and to a method of transferring photographic images to fabric to create a realistic appearing camouflage.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditionally, camouflage clothing patterns have taken the form of a repeated pattern of a particular hue or shade, in an attempt to simulate the natural environment. Thus, in forest areas, camouflage clothing appears as intermingled light and dark shades of green, with some brown mixed in. The patterns are typically abstract shapes, the intent being to break up the human outline against the particular background, and the design from the pants to the shirts is discontinuous. However, these prior art camouflage patterns have not adequately mimicked the intended environment due to the unrealistic nature of the patterns and the discontinuity in camouflage pattern from one item of clothing, such as pants, to another item of clothing, such as a shirt.
More recently, realistic artistic renditions of natural patterns, such as drawings of tree bark patterns, have been used on camouflage outfits in an attempt to overcome the limitations of traditional designs. However, the process of designing and rendering the patterns by hand is subjective, inaccurate, time consuming, and requires a designer with a high level of artistic skill as well as an understanding of the principles of camouflage design. Additionally, in designing a camouflage system incorporating several items of clothing, the quality and consistency of the rendition is subject to variations. Furthermore, no attempt has been made to design a camouflage system using renditions of natural patterns applied to multiple products, such as pants, shirt, and gloves, so that when worn together, the articles cover the body so as to form a continuous, or correlated, realistic camouflage pattern.
Still another technique used in an attempt to create more realistic camouflage patterns, and thus overcome the deficiencies of traditional camouflage patterns, involves taking a photograph of the environmental background where the camouflage pattern is intended to be used, and then processing the photograph to yield a somewhat random, high contrast pattern. The resulting pattern does not realistically resemble the object photographed, rather the resulting high contrast pattern lacks detail and resembles the abstract appearance of traditional camouflage patterns. In one implementation, the resulting pattern is copied by hand onto scale outline drawings of the object to be camouflaged. These drawings are then be used as masters from which artists hand copy the pattern onto the object to be camouflaged. Typically the pattern contains only two or three colors, such as black, light green and forest green. However this technique, which requires the camouflage pattern to be rendered by hand on each item to be camouflaged, is prohibitively expensive, and thus is not suitable for items of mass production, such as clothing. This technique is therefore relevant primarily to camouflage low quantity, high value items such as armored vehicles or buildings. Furthermore, this technique uses a very simple coloring scheme, and thus does not result in an accurate color replication of the photographed image used to create the pattern. Additionally, the pattern created by this technique appears somewhat random and abstract, and does not resemble the photographed object. Hence the resulting pattern is not a sufficiently realistic reproduction of the original object.